MAPLE SYRUP
(C)1989 Alan M. Schwartz
Some time ago, well into my third decade, I first tasted genuine
maple syrup. A teaspoonful of genuine maple syrup on your tongue
is liquid silk of the most exquisite and subtle maple flavor. A
squirt of genuine maple syrup on pancakes brushed with molten
butter is a hedonistic excess suffusing human awareness with warm
satisfaction and giddy oral delight. Until that forever
remembered moment I had only known the sticky brownish crap the
chemists make.
I am a chemist and generally disdain public sentiment regarding
synthetic food surrogates. My view is that anyone exhibiting
sufficient stupidity, self-destructiveness, or plain poor taste to
consume, especially to consume a second time, cheese with a "z"
would just as happily eat roofing mastic, glazing putty, tile
grout or used motor oil were it brightly packaged and presented
"in the food section of your local supermarket." Babies have
been known to eat their feces and drink bleach, demonstrating
their questionable gustatory superiority over puppies and
kittens. Yet the game of synthetic food is a fascinating one,
and one that entrapped me into believing that 3% maple syrup was
in some way related to the real thing.
Flavor is a tortuous maze. Some molecules have a structure
which, like left and right hands, has a mirror image that is not
superimposeable upon the original structure even though all the
atoms are otherwise connected identically. The taste of
spearmint is strictly due to left-handed carvone. The taste of
caraway seeds is strictly due to right-handed carvone. The
subtle taste of maple syrup is due to dozens of components, so
the chemists ignored it entirely and came up with an inexpensive
brew called "maple lactone" which is related to a maple tree with
the same fidelity that a wombat is related to a hot air balloon.
That it tastes something like maple is not nearly as important as
that it has a STRONG flavor, enough to overpower the upchuckingly
sweet taste of even high fructose corn syrup, the other component
of synthetic maple syrup.
In a world where hundreds of pounds of confiscated counterfeit
quality watches are smashed with a steamroller to express the
real manufacturer's extreme displeasure, an odious conspiracy is
merrily soiling the palates of ourselves and our children. The
touted wholesome goodness of fake pancake syrup is pandered to
the masses with the same gleeful unconcern that lead a certain
baby food manufacturer to mix corn syrup, water and apple
flavoring (isoamyl isovalerate, courtesy of your local
roundbottom flask) and call it apple juice for babies.
I anticipate a day when some freckle-faced urchin gets on the
tube and, with a big smile showing his missing front tooth, says
to the audience, "This stuff is loaded with corn syrup. I'm a
kid, and corn syrup gets me hot. Buy it." Look for it in the
food section of your supermarket. Insist on guaranteed quality
from the same folks who gave you oily butter slime (butanedione
and vegetable oil) for your movie theatre popcorn.
It requires 50 gallons of maple tree sap boiled down to make one
gallon of real maple syrup. It requires less than a gallon of
corn syrup and a drop of maple lactone, a very small drop, to
make one gallon of Aunt Yo' Momma or Log Outhouse pseudo-maple
sugary slime. Guess which kind of syrup the folk who went to
business school sell. Guess which kind of syrup the folk who
went to business school buy for themselves. My mouth and
personal satisfaction are just a little bit too important to
sacrifice on the altar of corn syrup. My body is draped in real
wool; my pancakes are slathered with real maple syrup.
Real maple syrup -- Slip a teaspoonful between the lips of a
friend.